


why respect gender when my potions can do anything you can

by Nausicaä Harris (Mort_Harris)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers, Transitioning, i have strong opinions about everyday magic use, just lup-centric really, there's other characters and a little smoochin' but mostly just wanky societal/personal stuff, transphobia is touched on lightly but only as a concept native to alien planes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 16:13:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12369372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mort_Harris/pseuds/Nausica%C3%A4%20Harris
Summary: A look at Lup's transition process.





	why respect gender when my potions can do anything you can

Lup starts her potion regimen when she's a little over thirty. An elf is mature physically and mentally at thirty-nine years - culturally at one hundred and seventeen, but "elf culture" has never been Lup and Taako's jam - but unlike tattoos, humans will sell you gender juice when you're under the ol' Little Three, since it really only works on people who need it. Lup has - for once in her life - actually done research on the magical theory instead of just scribing the spell and getting done with it, and she knows that _Calmasis' corporeal comfort_ is one of the easiest bio-transmutations to cast, since it alone makes a thing _more_ like itself instead of _less_. There's probably metaphysical bullshit that can be derived from the concept, but Lup is far more concerned with the fact that it makes gender juice - the kind you take monthly, at least - the cheapest potion in the shop.

 

It's possible to do a little wandwork and fine-tune it, but for the first couple of years taking it, she just downs it straight, watching her shoulders pull in and hips pull out, jaw smooth and hands and feet reshuffle. Her junk does absolutely _wackshit_ stuff when it flips over, which creates the only boundary she and Taako will have in their life, which is "Lup _please for the love of the Celestial LORDS don't put me in the same ROOM as this that is GROTESQUE and not in a fun way_." ( _His loss_ , she thinks; _this is DEFINITELY the fun kind of grotesque._ ) The continuing course of elf puberty is a challenge regardless of what your endocrine system is doing, but gender juice does kick it back onto the right track; her voice smooths out and breasts come in. There's no period to deal with - with a potion that only lasts a month, having it create a uterus would be profoundly irresponsible - but Lup isn't sure whether the physical pain would hurt more or less than the little nagging reminder caused by its absence.

 

Slowly, though, Lup starts to experiment. Let's be honest, some of it is for jerkin'-it purposes - not that it's any _worse_ with the ol' bag of holding, but come _on_ , if dick stuff is an available _option_ you can't expect a horny young elf to not _try_ it, _gods_. But some of it is also because she's still not sure, entirely, if this bodily _look_ is entirely right for her. It's different from _disguise self_ , she tells Taako, because Lords know they've both used that often enough, for purposes both cosmetic and not-wholly-farious. It's a _physical_ change, you can _feel_ what's going on, not some glamer layered over the body - and sure, it feels not just right but incredibly _, fundamentally_ right, but - what _else_ , she asks, would feel right?

 

Lup is tall, that's for certain, and growing taller as she heads towards Little Three, but she changes, month to month. She mixes up broad shoulders, rounded shoulders, narrow hips, wide hips, breasts or not, any number of looks for hands and feet and jaw, and while there's some combos that she eventually figures out are _aesthetically_ better, and some combos that get her consistently misgendered and which she only uses when she feels like starting fights, only Original Flavor Lup is a form that feels jarringly, hair-pullingly wrong. Sometimes she lets her voice change, but sometimes she doesn't - "you have a nice tenor", someone says once, and Lup bristles because it's a reminder, again, that she has to take a potion to be herself, but later on she thinks, _Yeah, I do have a pretty nice tenor_. Sometimes she sets dick to no, sometimes to yes; weirdly enough, this is the part that eventually matters least to her. Nobody sees her junk, most of the time - Lup has never been a "public changing spaces" person even disregarding the gender stuff, and when boning enters the equation, she's always at a point where this has already been delineated to a frankly excessive extent.

 

There's one stretch, though, pretty soon after Little Three, where Lup can't find gender juice at all - towns that don't even have that basic an alchemical supplier - and so, without talking about it, she and Taako hit the road towards the Tondi clans, some of the best bio-transmuters on the continent. Those months, while Lup learns magic with the kreen and the twins apply their wits to hustling people whose body language is wholly alien, Lup doesn't shift her outward form at all - she just changes her smell, since the kreen think all mammals look alike anyways. It was annoying at first, being called _draj_ no matter how elf-feminine she looked, but the kreen were always quick to apologize, and, when she started presenting gender through scent instead of shape, had no problems whatsoever. Far more annoying was how Taako started calling her Lu·, or in extreme cases Lu········, making a popping noise to mimic the way the lipless mantis-folk pronounced her name.

 

She scribes the spell decisively during a hot double-summer day, really nothing more than marginalia in the jumble of papers that serves as her spellbook. The magic's not powerful by any means, though the specificity makes it hard to grasp - but oh, when she _does_ grasp it, it's as exhilarating as her first _burning hands_ spell. Not wasting money on gender juice is liberating, but even more so is the feeling of complete control over her body. She burns all her spell slots on it the next day, and, after she makes it clear that he's not going to have to see that nasty thing, Taako joins her in making some truly beautiful monstrosities of gender performance, and her _chakaklik_ produces some appropriately horrified clicking sounds before complimenting her on her arcane mastery. Ker shakes her hands with all four of ker purple claws, saying, "I wish you the thery ·est othe luck, _dras_. _Mm_ olting is nether easy, es·ecially when you don't do it yearly. _Mm_ ay your chitin sothten quickly." Lup, upon reflection, really likes the concept that this constitutes a "molt".

 

By the time she and Taako get into the IPRE, some ninety years later, Lup's body is, within a few strict parameters, her plaything. (It's part of the nature of an elf's life to gloss over such long spans of time - Barry tells Lup at one point that it's so weird for him that Magnus barely remembers fantasy VHS tapes, and Lup says, quite innocently, that it's never been weird for her that Barry doesn't remember when all you had was _minor illusion_ and the caster's memory, which makes Barry stare into space for a while.) She and Taako are, undoubtedly, the two coolest kids in flight school, he putting on a new glamer every week and her body flowing into new shapes like the cycle of the moon.

 

The Stolen Century is … an adjustment. For the first time in her life, she really _, really_ needs to save her spell slots - she's done adventuring work before, but she usually had enough slots left over to get her gender right. Now, she uses the bare minimum to keep her looking feminine, and, sometimes, not even that. She still changes on a monthly basis, but she keeps it more restrained. It's exhausting, too, to have to keep resetting it - she was sporting a more gender-weird look when she first left her home, and after that stanky world on Cycle 11 where people took issue with the fact that she said she was a woman, she becomes cautious about her form. She and Lucretia have a long talk about that with a lot of sociology books on the table, and while intellectually she knows what's up, it still fucks her up that that mindset exists.

 

It's not all stonk-ass, though; Barry admits, once he finally takes her _fucking hints_ and feels comfortable whispering sweet nothings in her ear, to puzzlement at how good she is at shapechanging magic. Barry says he's tried it, as he's sure everyone has at one point or another, and he could never do what she does - to consistently display "Barry" through all the sick-ass transmutations the way she consistently displays "Lup". This makes Lup flick her ears back and forth excitedly for the rest of the conversation (at least until they swerve onto the fact that he's been using transmutation to cover up the ex's face he has tattooed on his left pec, and start cracking up).

 

And then there's cycle 99, and falling off the grid, and the whole decade of her body being a _fucking umbrella_. Lup learned pretty soon that her lich form could theoretically look like whatever she wants it to, as long as it's appropriately spooky, but being bodiless has always given her the same nagging dread of being slightly out of control of her shape, and the umbrella years, already bad enough, are that tiny bit shittier because of it. You're all caught up now, we know that much - Lup comes back and it looks sick as hell, they build a godsdamn barricade against despair, and, months later, she gets her body back. She's Original Flavor Lup when she bursts out of the cocoon, but she unleashes a transmutational fireworks display on the level of her evocation in the BoB dome, and in Barry's opinion, being smooched by a blur of shifting flesh has never looked hotter.

 

When Carey and Killian ask Lup to teach _Calmasis' corporeal comfort_ to their daughter Susan, fresh-faced and nervous, Lup of course accepts. Susan figures out that "a body you're comfortable with" could conceivably be anything a _lot_ quicker than Lup did. Lup never does end up taking a permanent potion; Lup and Susan's is not an uncommon experience by any means, but Lup thinks about it a lot more now that she has, for want of a better word, a protégé. Cycle 11 never invented bio-transmutation, and Lup is pretty glad that her society, and Faerûn's for that matter, did.

**Author's Note:**

> SO THIS GOT WILDLY OUT OF HAND but I really do think that Lup (and any trans person from magic land, to be honest) would have a really interesting relationship with her body and I stayed up way too late writing about it.  
> "Little Three" refers to three years of the IPRE homeworld's secondary sun, Little Brother, a brown dwarf that orbits their primary sun, Big Brother, a little further away than Jupiter does from Sol. CIRCUMBINARY TIMEKEEPING IS EXHAUSTING KIDS. The "ex's face tattoo" thing is a Tom Arnold thing which I am extremely disappointed that nobody incorporates into fanart (and yes, I believe that Barry also has the symbol of fantasy Judaism tattooed on his right pec).  
> (Also, do just wanna make it clear - I am a trans woman writing this.)
> 
> ETA: Thought I'd post my official game descriptions for _Calmasis' corporeal comfort_ and _gender juice_. _Calmasis' corporeal comfort_ appears on all classes' spell lists.
> 
> CALMASIS' CORPOREAL COMFORT  
>  _1st-level transmutation_
> 
>  **Casting Time:** 1 minute  
>  **Range:** Touch  
>  **Components:** S, M (a handful of flax seeds and soy beans)  
>  **Duration:** 1 month
> 
> You touch a willing creature. It physically assumes whatever sexual characteristics are the most comfortable match for its gender identity, presentation, and species. The recipient of the spell cannot conceive or sire children if its genitals are changed by this spell. This spell does not alter a creature’s size, coloration, or general appearance, and the creature remains recognizable as itself. If _Calmasis’ corporeal comfort_ is cast a second time on a creature, the more recent casting supplants it and the duration is renewed.  
>  **At Higher Levels.** When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the duration changes to Instantaneous. The creature can be altered by further castings of this spell, but the most recent 3rd-level casting becomes its "default" state. The recipient of the spell can conceive or sire children if its genitals are changed by this spell.
> 
> GENDER FLUID  
>  _Potion, common_  
>  When you drink this potion, you receive the effect of a 1st-level _Calmasis' corporeal comfort_. These potions can typically be found on the open market for 3 sp. A character who can earn a modest lifestyle can be assumed to be able to keep in supply of gender juice as long as they remain in a magic-using civilization.
> 
> PERMANENT GENDER FLUID  
>  _Potion, uncommon_  
>  When you drink this potion, you receive the effect of a 3rd-level _Calmasis' corporeal comfort_ spell. These potions can typically be found on the open market for 35 gp.


End file.
